The Dunning-Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in those who are overconfident in their knowledge and abilities. When we believe we know all there is to know about something, we also believe there is nothing new to learn about it. That’s just basic human nature. But in the Dunning-Kruger Effect, they tend to be dismissive of viewpoints that don’t align with theirs. That’s because they consider such sources as less educated or not as skilled as they are. And this is how they are using their knowledge in a way that limits them.
90’s quackery is a great example of this. In those days, psychology had ONE standard treatment plan for all survivors of adverse childhood homes and the therapists were convinced it was the solution to all our problems. Suffice to say, they knew nothing. If their quack methods did not work, well it reflected on us, not them. They closed their minds to the unique hurts we endured as being raised by Cluster B disordered (Trauma Glossary 1) parents, all because they were too certain of the limited research of their time.
Cognitive Bias: Impostor Syndrome and its Counterpart, the Dunning-Kruger Effect
Research is constantly evolving, especially in science and psychology. Each generation believed they had the best treatment plans. Then the next generation disproved something and so, improved those treatments. Those who have contributed to advances in psychology are those who took the time to really listen to their clients. They dared to consider their clients’ unique needs and think outside the limits of the latest “cutting edge” treatments to meet those needs. In other words, those who were not under the veil of the Dunning-Kruger Effect are the reason psychology is where it is today.
Sadly, there are those who flatter themselves that today’s answers are the forever answers. They never stop and consider how their overconfidence might look just as ridiculous in thirty years as the torturous treatments that were used in the Victorian asylums. And speaking of thirty years ago, I’m going to show you what therapy was like in the 1990’s. The sheer arrogance that existed in ’90’s quackery really does look ridiculous today. But we didn’t know any better. We put blind faith in these so-called “experts” and used it to limit our healing and growth. I hope you learn something valuable. Because there are those under the Dunning-Kruger Effect today.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect: Welcome to the 1990’s
We didn’t have YouTube of course but there were lots of “self-help” books that our therapists happily recommended. Toxic Parents by Dr. Susan Forward (published in 1989) was still the most popular. But every resource was pushing the same formula on any adult survivor of child abuse. So, it created this mentality among us, the abuse survivors. “If all of the experts are saying the same thing, then this must be how we are supposed to heal. They are the ones with the degrees and so, they know our needs better than we do.”
First they validated our experiences, which read like “Describe Cluster B abuse without ever saying personality disorders”. No therapist or resource dared to suggest that our parents might be psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists, borderlines, or histrionics. Nor were they interested in saying our experiences were traumatic. They used the term “painful” instead. But these were the pre-language days of the 90’s. If they validated us too much, we might be unresponsive to the “solutions” offered from their one-size-fits-all treatment plan.
1-List 10 Good Things About Your (Abusive) Parent
To be “fair” the first homework assignment was write a confrontation letter to the abusive parent. Get all our feelings out and then share it with our therapist on the next session. So far, so good…until they ended that session with our next homework assignment.
“List 10 bad things about your parent and 10 good things about your parent.” Imagine having endured so much trauma, you’re looking for guidance from a trained professional on how to work through the pain. Well, if you were seeking therapy in the 90’s, this would have been your second homework assignment. Oh, and don’t even think about listing more than ten bad things about your abusive parent. And you had better not skimp on the good traits of the abuser who happens to be your parent.
The point of this assignment was to make us see our abuser through a more “compassionate” lens. (Compassion for the very people who had none for us.) So, if we couldn’t find ten nice things to say about them, we were “holding on to resentment” and not seeing them clearly enough. I think they had this preconceived notion that just because we survived to adulthood, our abusers couldn’t have been “that bad”.
2-The Confrontation Stage: Read Your Confrontation Letter to Your Abuser
In the 90’s, we spent a lot of time talking about our trauma painful experiences while exploring how they marked us in our adult lives. Then, we were pushed into writing a new confrontation letter and share it with our abusive parents. As we know, Cluster B disorders refuse to take any accountability. And they are the first to go DARVO (Trauma Glossary 1) on you if you try holding them responsible for anything. We didn’t even know there was a name for it in the 90’s but we all knew what our parents would say:
- “That never happened.”
- “I don’t remember that.”
- “I’m sorry I’m not perfect.”
- “I did the best I could!”
- “I will not be accused of any of this!”
- “You owe me an apology.”
We tried to tell our therapists, “Hey, I already know how they’re going to respond and it’s going to be scary and hurtful.” And every therapist insisted we do it anyway “or else” we will never fully heal. “This is for you, not them,” they all preached.
Like I said, Toxic Parents by Dr. Susan Forward was still the most popular self-help book in the 90’s. She had a whole chapter on the confrontation stage. In it Forward admitted, “I push my clients hard into the confrontation stage” and that she had “heard it all” over the years. She even nicknamed her confrontation stage: “the ‘anything but that’ stage” because that’s how her clients – understandably – responded. But being a doctor, she felt she knew her clients’ needs better than they did. She even said that confronting our abusers “makes you a winner because you had the courage to do it.” In other words, we felt like cowards for not wanting our parents to invalidate us all over again.
3-Time to Forgive Your Abusers Now
So, we had just been retraumatized by step 2. If we hadn’t forgiven the abusive parent prior to step 2, then the therapists doubled down on pushing us hard to do just that. They encouraged us to explore our parents’ history because chances were high that they were abused too. If there was no abuse in their childhood, well, clearly our parents are just “impaired”. We need to let go of our disappointment in them due to this “impairment”.
Then they wanted us to waste our empathy and compassion on them. And that way, we could make peace with their decisions to abuse us. “The opposite of love is not hate,” they said. “It’s apathy.” Hatred controls us but apathy means we no longer care what happens to our abusers. They went on to add that we achieve apathy through forgiveness. And of course that was when they told us that everything we thought we knew about forgiveness was incorrect the whole time.
Toxic forgiveness is a byproduct of 90’s quackery. This is when they were redefining it. The only difference between their list of what “forgiveness doesn’t mean” then and what “forgiveness doesn’t mean” today is that one more thing has been added. Now forgiveness also doesn’t mean reconciling. But not so in the 1990’s…
4-Manage that Relationship and Don’t You Dare Go No Contact with Your Abusive Mother!
If your mother was the abusive one and you wanted to go no contact with her in the 90’s, your best solution was to avoid therapy like the plague. Also don’t read any 90’s self-help books because they all preached the same thing. “Your relationship with your mother is the most important relationship of your life.” Trying to argue this point with your therapist was a huge mistake. They weaponized all their education on the importance of the mother-child relationship and promptly used it to limit their understanding of our needs as adult survivors. They told us that until we learn to manage our relationship with our (abusive) mother we will never move forward or excel in new relationships.
What those under this widespread veil of the Dunning-Kruger Effect lacked in tools for us, they more than made up for it in “skills” for managing a relationship with an abuser. First, they reminded us that they only got away with abusing us as children because we weren’t in control then. But as adults, we are in control of how we respond to them. For example, if they verbally abuse us over the phone, all we have to do is hang up. If they get abusive while we visit them, we are always free to leave.
They used lots of roleplaying to train us on how to enable “communicate” with the abusive parent. We assumed the role of the abuser while the therapist demonstrated how to respond to their attacking words.
We were encouraged to always stay calm when communicating with them, because when our emotions take over, we are giving up control. Don’t tell them they are hurting you. First, acknowledge their unmet needs. And then say, “I feel you are hurting me”.
And thus concludes the 1990’s treatment plan.
Holy Dunning-Kruger Effect, Batman!
This one treatment plan for all adult survivors of adverse homes looks ridiculous thirty years later. But the point of any history lesson is to learn from past mistakes so that we can make better decisions in the future. Sure, we can all breathe a sigh of relief and say, Thank goodness this particular Dunning-Kruger Effect is no longer practiced. But it is naïve to think that other types of this are not happening today. So, before we laugh or shake a collective fist at 90’s quackery, what are the valuable lessons?
Well, for one thing, there wasn’t a lot of education on trauma, and it certainly wasn’t a requirement for earning a psychology degree. There was also the overall mentality of that generation. “Face your fears head on so that you can take control of your life,” and “Effective communication is the solution to all relationship problems” were practically shouted from the rooftops. Then they used that thinking in their treatment plan. “Face your fears head on” became the confrontation stage. “Effective communication” read like a user’s manual on maintaining a relationship with someone who will never reciprocate. While several decades of research had confirmed the importance of the mother-child bond for child development, they used this information to stagnate our growth as adults.
Toxic Parents by Dr. Susan Forward was the most popular book of the 1990’s. Other psychologists wanted to sell books too. And so, they followed similar lines of thinking without first checking to see if these methods were actually working. This created severe tunnel vision in the psychology community. Every self-help book with the ’90’s copyright date followed the exact same formula. Validate our experiences through the first half and then start invalidating in the second half.
How to Protect Ourselves from the Dunning-Kruger Effect Today
First, psychology has come a long way since the 1990’s. Trauma research and especially our understanding of the vagus nerve has opened up our understanding on the devastating effects of relational trauma, which includes parental abuse. It’s the very reason we can look back on ’90’s therapy and laugh at it today. But that also creates new ways of falling under the veil of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Point 1
So, the first and most important lesson is to understand that first, there are multiple treatment plans available today. Just because one treatment plan works for most people does not guarantee that it’s going to work for you. And if it doesn’t work for you, it is not a reflection of your “failure”. It is a reflection your unique needs and the treatment plan is not meeting them. Do not let some overconfident therapist tell you otherwise. Because overconfidence tends to be a side-effect of the Dunning-Kruger Effect and the Dunning-Kruger Effect is in my opinion, the number one red flag you are dealing with a bad therapist.
Point 2
Second, always consider the mentality of our current generation. Both now and the future. Today’s generation is pushing for tolerance and inclusion. While of course we should practice tolerance instead of hatred for those who are different from us and we should never intentionally leave good people out, the Cluster B disorders have been using today’s climate to further abuse us. There are also those who are playing on today’s mentality to further enable Cluster B disorders into silencing your voice. Those who are running successful YouTube channels and social media pages to crowd please today’s mentality have not stopped to think that they are going to look just as ridiculous in thirty years as 90’s quackery looks today.
Point 3
Lastly, always consider who is considered the leading authority on our problems at this time. Are others in that field sharing their independent insights or are they just regurgitating the same information from today’s leading authority?
This is what was happening in the 1990’s and it’s still happening today. That does not necessarily mean that we should debunk anyone who is today’s leading authority. Simply be aware of those who are sharing information from the same source. Understand that this does not mean you must abide by what “everyone else” is saying, especially if it doesn’t fit your needs. It is also perfectly acceptable to agree with most of the information while still disagreeing with a few points made by the same source.
In the 1990’s, we took for granted that the therapists all knew better than we did, no matter how retraumatized we felt by their so-called “treatments”. So, I hope that the number one takeaway you get from this history lesson is how to respond to anyone who asks you, “You think you know more than a psychologist?” I hope you respond, “Damn right I do!” Because honestly? Any good therapist who is daring to think outside the box on our behalf is doing so because they know that they are learning from us just as much as we are learning from them.